Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model (10 page)

40. Worse

When yesterday they were thrown out of the plane back to the runway, Natalia thought that nothing worse in her life could happen. Soon she realized that was wrong. Seriously wrong.

They were put in the old bus and taken back to the village, without any explanation. No one knew anything - why this flight had been canceled, when the next flight would be. The administrator absurdly spread his hands, referring to the order of some distant superiors. Back in the village, they found there were no Internet, as well as the usual temperamental telephone lines. But there were more guards. She saw strong men in uniform and with guns, patrolling the village border.

“What’s happened?” It was the first time that day she’d said anything to her escort. Boris, who was usually silent and sleepy, was unusually lively and brisk, talking with others in English and Spanish.

“I don’t know, but there is obviously some sort of mess. Have you any money?”

“Yes, for what?”

“Go to the store and buy some food - canned meat, biscuits, chocolate, dried sausages and bottled water.”

They met again at the club. Three hundred people had already gathered in the large hangar, where there were billiard tables, bowling lanes and a bar. The number of bottles had dramatically decreased. Boris was waiting for her, watching Game of Thrones on the big screen. There was news on the next screen, but nothing interesting was being reported.

“That's all you could get?”

“There was almost nothing left.”

“Use this reserve cautiously; I don’t know when more will be brought. The plane didn’t arrive today, and it won’t come tomorrow, either.”

“Does that mean no dinner?”

In the end dinner wasn’t cancel. But the number of meals decreased, and instead of salad there was a big plate of spaghetti with cheese and sausage, which Boris ate with gusto. Natasha herself didn’t eat spaghetti, especially with cheese, in order to protect her figure, but this time she ate every last mouthful.

After dinner, there was nothing to do. She didn’t play billiards or bowl, so the girl had no choice but to return to her tiny room in the hostel. Fortunately it was still vacant, because the new shift hadn’t arrived. The Internet was dead, so she took a stack of old magazines, each of which she’d read several times. Magazines and Sex and the City on her tablet, what else could she do?

Her restless sleep in the stuffy little room ended in a nightmare, filled with no terrible visions but a monstrous roar. She opened her eyes, but realized the roar was a reality; the siren roared every few minutes.

“What is it?!”

Outside the window it was already dawn, and the inhabitants of the village were out in the street from their individual houses and the hostel. Their eyes were turned toward the city, where thick clouds of black smoke rose in the morning sky. There was something burning yesterday, she knew, but now there were many more fires. She had never seen anything like it.

And there was something else that she didn’t notice until after the siren was silenced. Shooting. She could hear gunfire from the city - shots merging into a single background, which was dominated by a persistent hacking clatter.

“Shilka.”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

This was Boris. He stood nearby, looking at the city through a telescope.

“Feel it in my heart that we are on the verge of a grand nix.”

After the siren had spoiled the morning, it took two hours for the sun to rise high above the mountains and the temperature to increase. Work at the plant had stopped, and the guards were forbidden to leave the territory. They were all waiting for something, but it was not clear what. They waited through the delay, managing to have breakfast, though this time it was very poor - a plate of porridge, sandwiches and coffee. While they ate, the shooting from the city subsided, but now helicopters could be heard, scurrying in a cloudless blue sky.

“Attention! Attention!”

“Oh, maybe they’ll finally tell us what…”

“Quiet!”

“Attention! Listen up! Because of the threat of terrorist attacks, work at the plant will be shut down until further notice. The entire staff will be immediately evacuated to a naval base.

The plant will operate only a duty brigade under guard. I repeat - the entire staff, except for the duty brigade, will be evacuated to a naval base because of the threat of terrorist attacks! The evacuation will begin in an hour. Don’t take luggage, just documents and essentials. I repeat - no luggage, only documents!”

“What does this mean? What attacks, evacuation, where?”

“To a naval base. It’s around twelve miles from here. It looks like we might be stuck here for a long time.”

“How can this be? I must be in Russia, I have vacation soon! I’ve already brought tickets for Paris…”

Natasha’s screaming was drowned by the sounds of powerful trucks that came down the hill in a long column, heading for the main gate. A helicopter flew low over the village, raising red dust. Boris saw the shooter, sun reflected on his helmet light filter.

“Now what?”

“Now, lady, you should do what was ordered before things become worse.”

“Maybe it's provocation? Provocation against me? Maybe they think I'm a KGB agent and…”

“Yeah, and they want to frame you by burning the city. Calm down, it’s nothing to do with you.”

“You… ah!”

Boris in one motion wrung her fingers so that the acute pain has excluded all sorts of resistance.

“Shut up, you stupid fool. Stop panicking and look around. The whole city was burned down, and not because matches were carelessly handled. There was fighting all night, and a lot of people were killed, that’s clear from the intensity of the shooting.

“And now the plant owners are quickly closing up shop and running to the nearest military base, which means that there is something very seriously wrong. Maybe it is a terrorist attack, or a full-scale armed conflict. War. You understand? We are in deep shit, and not we personally, but everyone gathered here. And if you want to get out of this shit alive and smelling of roses, be kind enough to carry out my instructions, help me to do my job and get your ass out of here without complications. Agreed?”

He let go of her fingers, and she stared at him with a look of anger and misunderstanding. And fear.

“I'm going to complain as soon as we get back!”

“I'm also going to complain, with a detailed list of everything that has happened. But first we must return. And you will do anything on my orders, or you’re on your own. Which do you choose?”

She managed to cope with her anger as her innate prudence suggested to her that this martinet was right. Now she had to work with him.

“Fair enough! What should I do?”

“To begin with quietly sit in the truck and leave for the base. I think that in this turmoil they don’t really care that a couple of Russians happened to be in town, but still, let’s not attract too much attention.”

“And then what… hey!”

Boris ducked, pulling Natasha down, and the screaming of people was muffled by the roar of helicopter engines and machine guns.

A Black Hawk hit some unseen targets in the east. Then came the blast of mortars being fired somewhere nearby. Thirty seconds later the shelling stopped.

“What now? I don’t know. To start with we need to get to the base alive and healthy. Then we’ll try to find each other – I think at the base men and women will be separated.”

“So this is war? With whom?”

“They’re Americans, lady. They will always someone to go to war against.”

41. Even worse

Loading took longer than expected. First they sent only the women with children, which filled all the available minibuses. The transport provided was still not enough, and those who had no place in the minibuses, were put in trucks. It’s the usual military trucks with camouflage tents and hard benches, and Boris could see no armored MRAP
vehicles
. He did notice how workers quickly loaded boxes and bags of food from the warehouse to the trucks, which strengthened his suspicions about big trouble ahead. As far as he knew, the Americans have never suffered from a lack of food in war, so it meant that they were making this revision of provisions for a very good reason. He wasn’t surprised if at the same time going mining of the plant.

“Start loading the second column!”

Natasha tries to climb into the truck first, but Boris stopped her.

“What?”

“We’ll get in last and sit at the rear; it won’t be so stuffy there.”

“Ah, okay.”

Gently pushing her up, he then quickly took his place. The marines raised the tailgate, and, after about half a minute, the truck started moving slowly to the gate. Boris kept a watch on everything that was happening. He had deliberately placed them at the back of the truck, and not just due to the stifling atmosphere; they must be prepared to abandon ship if needed.

“…call?”

“What?”

“Can we call from this base? Call home?”

“I wouldn’t count on it. They’ve disabled the Internet and telephones; they don’t want civilians able to contact anyone. Most likely, people on the mainland don’t know anything about what is happening here.”

“I’m worried about my job! I will be fired if I don’t return in time, how I will explain…”

Natasha didn’t finish the sentence because she was thrown on a woman sitting on the right - the driver had abruptly stamped on the brakes.

“What is it?”

The pause for unclear reasons lasted two minutes, and then the column moved forward again, still at a low speed. For those two minutes Boris waited for shooting, but it remained quiet.

“How long until we get there?”

“Another half hour.”

There was a rumble, and a blast wave struck the tent board. The truck shuddered, drove a dozen meters and stopped, banked to the left side. Flames could be seen through huge holes in the tent.

“Get out!”

Boris pushed Natasha overboard, and then jumped. The girl tried to get up immediately after the hard landing, but he knocked her down.

“Don’t get up!”

The shooting didn’t stop, as survivors climbed from the burning trucks, many injured. There was furious honking from behind, as the truck following tried to pull off the road and pass by. There was a loud bang and the unarmored cabin shattered into pieces. The broken car veered off into the ditch, and Boris barely managed to pull Natasha from under the wheels.

The truck travelled a little further, then the front left wheel hit a bump, and it collapsed to the side. A wounded soldier tried to jump from the broken cabin. And then Boris saw the enemy, only twenty meters in front of him - a man in a baseball cap and a dirty greasy overall, who just appeared from out of the ground. He adjusted the carbine barrel rifle grenade, shooting something, and then reached for the next grenade, before falling in a spray of blood, chopped in two by aircraft machine guns.

“What do we do?”

“Lie down!”

For a couple of seconds Boris left her in the ditch, quickly crawling to the overturned truck and removing the gun from the soldier’s corpse.

“Natasha - here, quick!”

Some of the passengers in the overturned truck had survived the explosion, he heard cries for help. He removed a short knife from his belt and ripped through the canvas roof, giving them a way out. The next shot rang out, and Boris, extremely cautiously, peered for a brief moment out of the truck.

He saw the enemy, this time a few of them, again climbing out of some holes in the ground. In their hands were machetes and axes, and they frantically cut the refugees. One of the killers froze for a moment, and then rushed to Boris’ hiding place.

The Colt 1911 twitched in Boris’ hand, and the madman with a bloody machete caught a bullet in the stomach, falling face down in the sand. The second one Boris hit in the chest, but somehow he kept his feet and continued to run, so with the third shot Boris shot him in the face. Then machine guns hit the corpse.

“DROP THE GUN!”

He immediately obeyed, throwing the Colt far away - in the heat of battle they could easily take him for an assailant and shoot before they understood their mistake.

42
.
Arrivals

“Where are they hiding?”

“Underground, sir. Thirty years ago there was a plant there, and the sewage effluents went straight to the ocean, under the road. The plant is long gone, but the pipes survived and the infected are hiding there. They let the first group pass and hit the column in the center. Two trucks with refugees were destroyed, and two more were damaged.”

The Colonel once again looked at the record of the fight. The first car had been undermined, while the second truck was forced off the road. Here were the attackers - they did indeed climb out of some holes in the ground like cockroaches. They hit the second truck, so that the passengers jumped out, then approached the armored convoy, beginning a fierce firefight. More and more infected climbed from the underground shelter to the surface. Not all attackers were armed with firearms; many had machetes, axes and other agricultural tools in their hands. Some were unarmed, but that didn’t stop them. The infected didn’t try to attack the marines, they aimed for the refugees. It would be necessary to ask Palmer why this would be - why did they attack only those who weren’t infected, why did they not kill each other? Mass insanity? It was unlikely that they had completely lost their minds. The ambush was well organized, the infected using knowledge of the territory as a significant advantage.

“Losses?”

“At the moment we have two dead and three wounded, one seriously. There are eleven dead civilians, including two women and one child. It’s been confirmed thirty-six attackers have been killed.”

“How many wounded civilians?”

“Nineteen, three seriously.”

“Send them into quarantine. And who is this?”

The Colonel drew attention to a civilian – the man with the gun had an effective resistance to his attackers.

“Find out who it is.”

The handcuffs of white durable plastic tape, which were put on immediately after the shooting, had been removed only upon arrival at the base, after he was taken from an armored car and held in a large tent, like a registration point. The handcuffs were removed, and he was offered a place at the plastic table and given a glass of warm water.

“Boris Kond…”

“Boris Kondratiev. Kondratiev.”

“Kondratiev, I see. A citizen of the Russian Federation, in this country on a work visa. What brought you to this land, Comrade Kondratiev?”

Boris looked at the skinny bespectacled man, who held his passport.

“I work for the gas company, as a security guard. I’m here guarding Natalia Smirnova, a manager. She's here on a business trip.”

“Natalia, this is the girl who was with you in the truck?”

“Yes. Is she all right?”

“She's all right; a couple of bruises and all. So what was she dealing with at the factory?”

“That you will have to ask her, I'm just a guard. In any case, our business here had finished, and we were supposed to fly yesterday. My boarding pass is inside the passport. The flight was canceled.”

“I get it. Mr. Kondratiev, did you serve in the Russian army?”

“In an airborne squadron.”

“Oh, airborne troops! Did you participate in the recent conflicts?”

“Yes.”

“Clearly, it will be necessary for us to clarify that. You speak English well – do you speak any other languages except Russian?”

“Just a little Spanish. I can order a beer and a snack, nothing more.”

“It’s not surprising that you were sent to protect Miss Smirnov, you have a comprehensive approach to this work.”

“I try. And now, if I may ask a question – am I arrested, and if so, on what charge?”

“No, you aren’t arrested and there are no charges at all. We had to bring you here in this way because the circumstances, but now everything has been cleared up; you can go to the other civilians in camp. And thank you for your participation, it was very timely.”

“You’re welcome. But I’d like to know who I had to kill today, protecting myself and the other refugees? Just in case, to avoid later misunderstandings.”

“Terrorists, Mr. Kondratiev, terrorists. It was self-defense, fully within the law; you don’t need to worry on that score. All the best.”

A marine came in and Boris realized that the conversation was over. He came out of the registration point, not asking a lot of questions. He didn’t ask who these terrorists were or what they wanted. It was also useless to ask when he would be allowed to leave the country. He should just be happy that he’d reached the base alive and hadn’t been thrown in jail.